266 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



Prom these illustrations it will be noted the utter impossibility 

 for certain plants to be perpetuated from seeds, or to produce 

 fruit, without aid from an agent outside themselves. Here the 

 bee comes in to play its important part in our fruit-crops. 



What I have said in relation to the distribution of the sexual 

 flowers in the variegated laurel, palms, &c, is equally true and 

 holds good in the blossoms of our orchard fruits, with this excep- 

 tion — that they have not separate sexual flowers, but the sexual 

 organs are in one and the same flower. Notwithstanding this, 

 the stamens mature, iand the pollen is distributed some time (in 

 some cases days) before the pistil, or rather the stigma, is suffi- 

 ciently developed to receive it. Thus, while the male organs of 

 some of the flowers have perfected, maturition in others is still 

 progressing, and so with the pistil ; so that the fertilisation of the 

 fruit blossom by its own pollen is as impossible as if the repro- 

 ductive organs were on different plants, or iat least on different 

 flowers on the same tree ; therefore a foreign agent is as essential 

 to transport the pollen from hermaphrodite flowers as from that 

 of dioecious. The oft-quoted aphorism, "Nature abhors a vacu- 

 um," was reconstructed by Darwin into "Nature abhors perpetual 

 self-fertilisation" ; and the various ways Nature has arranged the 

 pollen-bearing organs is Nature's safeguard against what is termed 

 in-and-in reproduction, and cross-pollenation ensured. Cross- 

 pollenation has long been recognised in the economy of the repro- 

 duction of members of the vegetable kingdom. It was known 

 as far back as the time of Herodotus. He describes the process 

 of the transference (oaprification) of the pollen from the male tree 

 to that of the female, by which means a crop of dates w.as ensured 

 on the Egyptian palms. 



Some early-blossoming trees seem to burst forth suddenly, 

 especially pears. In looking through a truss or a bunch of pear 

 blossoms on the same stem that have, just opened, it will be noted 

 that the parts perfected are the calyx, the corolla, and the stamen. 

 The pistils are still undeveloped. After the anthers have dis- 

 charged their pollen, the ripening of the pistils commences ; and 

 by the time the stigma is receptive, there is no pollen from the 

 first opening blooms wherewith these early-maturing blossoms can 

 be fertilised. It is obvious that the all-important pollen must 

 be obtained from some other flowers, or there will be a failure 

 in the crops of the tree that has so blossomed. I shall point out 

 further on that the pollen from any source, if the bees were to 

 convey it, will be as great a failure as if the stigma were entirely 



